Maitreya teaching. Message from Lord Maitreya. Stages of presentation of Maitreya and the Hierarchy of Masters to the world

Dystopia flourished in the 20th century. This is connected both with the flourishing of utopian consciousness in the first decades of the 20th century, and with attempts at implementation at the same time, with the setting in motion of those social mechanisms thanks to which mass spiritual enslavement on the basis of modern scientific achievements became a reality. Of course, it was primarily on the basis of the realities of the 20th century that dystopian social models arose in the works of very different writers. Dystopian works are like a signal, a warning about the possible imminent decline of civilization. The novels of anti-utopians are similar in many ways: each author talks about the loss of morality and the lack of spirituality of the modern generation, each world of anti-utopians is just bare instincts and “emotional engineering” [Shishkin, 1993:4].

The origins of dystopia, like utopia, lie in antiquity - in some of the works of Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius. The term was first used by British philosopher John Stuart Mill in a parliamentary speech in 1868. However, elements of literary dystopia appeared much earlier. For example, the third book of Gulliver's Travels (1727) by Jonathan Swift, with its description of the flying island of Laputa, is actually a technocratic dystopia.

Dystopia typically depicts a society that has reached a socio-moral, economic, political or technological impasse due to a series of bad decisions made by humanity over the course of long period. Also, dystopia may turn out to be a post-apocalyptic version, which shows a society that has collapsed due to internal contradictions.

Elements of dystopia are found in the books of Jules Verne (“Five Hundred Million Begums”) and H.G. Wells (“When the Sleeper Awake,” “The First Men on the Moon,” “The Time Machine”). Of other early dystopias, it is worth noting “ Inner house» by Walter Besant (1888): humanity achieves immortality, which leads to complete stagnation; Jack London's The Iron Heel (1907): American workers groan under the rule of a fascist oligarchy; "Condemned to Death" by Claude Farrer (1920): striking workers are destroyed by cruel capitalists, and their places at the machines are taken by machines.

The dystopian genre became more notable after the First World War, when, in the wake of revolutionary changes, some countries tried to translate utopian ideals into reality. The main one turned out to be Bolshevik Russia, so it is not surprising that the first great dystopia appeared here. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We” (1924) describes an extremely mechanized society, where the individual becomes a helpless cog-“number”. A number of details of the totalitarian system invented by Zamyatin were subsequently used by authors all over the world: forced lobotomy of dissidents, mass media zombifying the people, ubiquitous “bugs”, synthetic food, weaning people from showing emotions. Among other notable domestic dystopias of the 1920s, we note “Leningrad” by Mikhail Kozyrev, “Chevengur” and “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov. Among foreign anti-socialist works, “The Future is Tomorrow” by John Kendell (1933) and “Anthem” by Ayn Rand (1938) stand out.

Another widespread theme of dystopias of those years was anti-fascist, directed primarily against Germany. Already in 1920, the American Milo Hastings published the visionary novel “The City eternal night": Germany shuts itself off from the rest of the world in an underground city near Berlin, where a "Nazi utopia" is established, populated by genetically bred races of superhumans and their slaves. But the NSDAP arose only a year before! Interesting anti-fascist books were written by H.G. Wells (The Autocracy of Mr. Parham, 1930), Karel Capek (War with the Newts, 1936), Murray Constantine (Night of the Swastika, 1937).

However, traditional capitalism also suffered. One of the peaks of dystopia is the novel by the British Aldous Huxley “O Wonderful One.” new world" (1932), which depicts a technocratic "ideal" caste state based on achievement genetic engineering. In order to suppress social discontent, people are treated in special entertainment centers or with active use of the drug "soma". A variety of sex is encouraged in every possible way, but such concepts as “mother”, “father”, “love” are considered obscene. Human history has been replaced with a fake: the calendar is calculated from the birth of the American automobile magnate Henry Ford. In general, capitalism taken to the point of absurdity...

Attempts to build a “new society” were mercilessly ridiculed in the classic dystopias of another Briton, George Orwell. The setting of the story “Animal Farm” (1945) is a farm where “oppressed” animals, led by pigs, drive out their owners. The result is that after the inevitable collapse, power passes to a brutal dictator. The novel 1984 (1948) depicts a near-future world divided by three totalitarian empires that are in a very unstable relationship with each other. The hero of the novel is an inhabitant of Oceania, where English socialism has triumphed and the inhabitants are under the constant control of the secret services. Of particular importance is the artificially created “newspeak”, which instills absolute conformism in people. Any party directive is considered the ultimate truth, even if it contradicts common sense: “War is peace”, “Freedom is slavery”, “Ignorance is strength”. Orwell’s novel has not lost its relevance even now: the “politically correct dictatorship” of a society of victorious globalism, ideologically, is not so different from the picture painted here.

Closer to Orwell’s ideas are the later “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury (1953) and “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess (1953). Dystopias were composed by Soviet dissident writers: “Lyubimov” by Andrei Sinyavsky (1964), “Nikolai Nikolaevich” by Yuz Aleshkovsky (1980), “Moscow 2042” by Vladimir Voinovich (1986), “Defector” by Alexander Kabakov (1989). A modernized version of dystopia has become classic cyberpunk, whose heroes are trying to survive in a soulless information technocracy.

Nowadays, dystopia continues to be a popular trend in Science Fiction, in many ways connecting with political fiction. After all, Western society, despite its glossy brilliance, is far from perfect, and the prospects for its development cause reasonable concern (“Battle Royale” by Koushun Takami, “Accelerando” by Charles Stross). In Scott Westerfeld's Freaks trilogy, the world of the future is steeped in glamor: flawless beauty is a cult, and anyone who tries to maintain their individuality becomes a pariah. Max Barry's anti-globalization fantasy Jennifer's Government depicts a world almost entirely under US control.

In America, a special surge of interest in dystopias came after the events of September 11, when, under the pretext of fighting terrorists, the government launched an attack on the rights of citizens. For five years now, books by Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, and Burgess have not disappeared from the American bestseller lists. Their fears turned out to be unfounded...

Essentially, dystopias lead away from dreams. The ultimate dream in the nightmare she created is simply the desire to survive, to be reborn, to return to her world, accepting it as it is.

Dystopia is a modern movement of social thought that questions the possibility of achieving social ideals and is based on the belief that arbitrary attempts to bring these ideals to life are accompanied by catastrophic consequences. The dystopia expressed sharp criticism of various forms of totalitarianism, the threat of rationalized technocracy and the bureaucratization of society.

Dystopia highlights the most dangerous, from the authors’ point of view, social trends. (In a similar sense, in Western sociological literature the concepts of “dystopia”, that is, a “distorted, inverted” utopia, and “kakotopia”, that is, a “country of evil”) are also used.) Dystopia can be presented as a unique self-reflection of the genre of social utopia. Dystopia significantly changes the perspective of viewing an ideal society: the very possibility of the positive implementation of any transformative intellectual project is called into question. At the same time, if in the genre of traditional utopia there is an imaginary appeal of the authors to the past and present, then in the style of dystopia the dominant focus is on the future. Construction of dystopia as a special laconic N.A. Berdyaev: “Utopias look much more feasible than they previously believed. And now we are faced with a question that torments us in a completely different way: how to avoid their final implementation?” [Vasyuchenko, 1989:214]. A similar attitude became the leitmotif of the entire subsequent anti-utopian trend in bourgeois social thought of the 20th century, according to which utopia is violence against reality, against human nature and paves the way to a totalitarian system, and any future idealized in utopias can only be worse than the present.

The fundamental property of dystopia, which remains constant in it, no matter what the material is - it does not change, it challenges the myth created by utopia without due regard to reality. A. Zverev emphasizes: “For a classical utopia, an element of social mythology is mandatory; it can be expressed with more or less distinctness, but is always present” [Nemzer, 1991: 87]. Dystopia and myth are concepts related to one another only by the relation of the principle of incompatibility. The myth from which the image of an earthly paradise grows is tested in dystopia in order to test not so much its feasibility as the morality of its foundations. If the spiritual utopia is Platonic, then the dystopia, one might say, breathes the spirit of Heraclitus: for this parodic genre, “everything flows” and “all truths are erroneous.” At best, dystopia recognizes the ongoing progress of more and more new hypotheses without a final solution - without “ last issue" In short, utopia asserts what we know; dystopia asks why we think we know. A. Zverev believes that “a dystopia is a caricature of a positive utopia, a work that sets out to ridicule and discredit the very idea of ​​perfection, the utopian attitude in general” [Zverev, 1989:17].

Thus, as a result of the development and formation of dystopias as a genre in literature, the following poetic features can be identified in it:

1. Dystopias depict fictional societies, but they are intended to evoke not admiration, as in utopias, but horror, not to attract, but to repel, and in no case could they be considered ideal.

2. Dystopianists are characterized by a warning motive.

3. Dystopia is characterized by a sober, rational view of utopian ideals. Dystopias always challenge the myth created by utopias without any basis in reality.

4. Dystopia is connected with real life, they show what comes out of utopian ideas if they are put into practice, therefore dystopias are always built on an acute conflict, prompted by life, and have a dramatic, intense plot. bright characters of the heroes.

5. Dystopias conduct polemics with utopian ideals with the help of illusions and reminiscences.

6. Dystopias use science fiction to discredit the world, revealing its illogicality, absurdity, and hostility to humans.

7. Satire, grotesque, and paradoxes serve the same purposes.

Thus, utopia and dystopia are generated by life and entered literature as genres.

The goal of the dystopian genre is freedom in the use of artistic means; it turns to science fiction, satirical techniques, allusions, and reminiscences. Dystopia always has a detailed plot, which is built on a conflict of ideas that are concretely embodied in the characters.

It is no coincidence that it was in the 20th century, in the era of cruel experiments to implement utopian projects, that dystopia finally took shape as an independent literary genre. “Dystopia, or inverted utopia,” writes the English researcher Charles Welsh, “was in the 19th century an insignificant frame for utopian products. Today it has become the dominant type, if it has not already become statistically dominant.”

Utopia is a dream. Dystopia is the response of a human being to the pressure of a new order that has found literary expression. Dystopia always appears at the turn of the century, in an era of surprises that brings the desired future. In a dystopia, the world, built on the same principles as the world of utopia, is given from the inside, through the feelings of its individual inhabitant, who experiences the laws of a society of ideal non-freedom on himself and his private fate. Utopia is sociocentric, dystopia is always personalistic, because the world here is experienced by man. Dystopia always challenges the world created by utopians without regard to reality. Any utopia, even the most voluminous one, is always somewhat schematic, since it without hesitation depicts the desired equality of people in an ideal state. Dystopia is an attempt to penetrate into the utopian theory, it is not so much a test of utopia for its feasibility (the authors of dystopias never question the possibility of implementing the technical side of the matter), but a test for the morality of its foundations, it is a kind of preventive measure, an attempt to identify the strength of the moral foundation of society , and maybe even its immorality.

In dystopia we have a special “type of artistry.” Unlike utopia, it has a novel conflict (otherwise it turns into a scheme); consideration of this conflict allows the author to reveal his attitude to what is happening in the depicted world.

Dystopia - depiction of dangerous, harmful consequences various kinds social experiments related to the construction of a society corresponding to one or another social ideal. “The dystopian genre began to actively develop in the 20th century and acquired the status futurological forecast, a warning novel" [Nemzer, 1991:175].

There is no doubt that the dystopian genre is becoming increasingly relevant in our time. Many authors of dystopian works of the first half of the twentieth century tried to foresee exactly the time in which we live. Huxley himself, in turn, notes: “Brave New World is a book about the future, and, whatever its artistic or philosophical qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if the predictions contained in it tend to come true. From the current time point modern history- after fifteen years of our further sliding down its inclined plane - do those predictions look justified? Are the predictions made in 1931 confirmed or refuted by the bitter events that have occurred since then?

Conclusions on the second chapter

Utopia and dystopia are generated by life and entered literature as genres. Each of these genres has its own goals, hence the originality of poetics.

Utopia is more associated with a rationalistic way of thinking and schematism in depicting life and people.

Dystopia is more free in the use of artistic means; it turns to science fiction, satirical techniques, allusions, and reminiscences. Dystopia always has a detailed plot, which is built on a conflict of ideas that are concretely embodied in the characters.

Dystopia comprehended many social and spiritual processes in society, analyzed its delusions and catastrophes, not in order to simply deny everything, but in order to indicate dead ends and possible ways to overcome them. Literature, even real literature, the truth, cannot change the world. But a writer with the true gift of a prophet is able to warn humanity, which is what anti-utopianists are called upon to do.

Utopia of the Order. Such utopias are based on activities aimed at creating certain islands of good within a bad society. They affirm the ideal, contrasting its reality with the existing bad society. At the end of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries in Europe there were very numerous “Unions of Friends”; most often they united around themselves young people protesting against the world of the “old”, in

in which they saw the dominance of egoism. A group of young people, not seeing the possibility of a complete transformation of this bad society, creates within it a reserve of the highest moral values ​​- small world, based on completely different principles than Big world. Classic literary example Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister serves as such an “island in the sea of ​​social life” - a novel that generally represents a true analogy of utopian motifs.

Utopias of politics. It is based on activities aimed at replacing a bad society with a new, good one. This practical use utopian thinking in the life of society. The Jacobins studied from the books of Rousseau, Babe, when creating the “Conspiracy in the Name of Equality”, turned directly to Morelli. Classic examples the era of the Great gives us utopias of politics french revolution, the only era in history when revolutionary politics lived by the slogan “start all over again,” the slogan of a complete break with the past and the construction of a new society according to the principle of Reason.

The political utopia of that era was the social contract.

Dystopia in the twentieth century: evolution and typology

Dystopia flourished in the 20th century. This is connected both with the flourishing of utopian consciousness in the first decades of the 20th century, and with attempts at implementation at the same time, with the setting in motion of those social mechanisms thanks to which mass spiritual enslavement on the basis of modern scientific achievements became a reality. Of course, it was primarily on the basis of the realities of the 20th century that dystopian social models arose in the works of very different writers. Dystopian works are like a signal, a warning about the possible imminent decline of civilization. The novels of dystopians are similar in many ways: each author talks about the loss of morality and the lack of spirituality of the modern generation, each world of dystopians is just bare instincts and “emotional engineering.”

The origins of dystopia, like utopia, lie in antiquity - in some of the works of Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius. The term was first used by British philosopher John Stuart Mill in a parliamentary speech in 1868. However, elements of literary dystopia appeared much earlier. For example, the third book of Gulliver's Travels (1727) by Jonathan Swift, with its description of the flying island of Laputa, is actually a technocratic dystopia.

Dystopia typically depicts a society that has reached a socio-moral, economic, political or technological impasse due to a series of bad decisions made by humanity over a long period. Also, dystopia may turn out to be a post-apocalyptic version, which shows a society that has collapsed due to internal contradictions.

Elements of dystopia are found in the books of Jules Verne (“Five Hundred Million Begums”) and H.G. Wells (“When the Sleeper Awake,” “The First Men on the Moon,” “The Time Machine”). Among other early dystopias, it is worth noting Walter Besant's Inner House (1888): humanity achieves immortality, which leads to complete stagnation; Jack London's The Iron Heel (1907): American workers groan under the rule of a fascist oligarchy; "Condemned to Death" by Claude Farrer (1920): striking workers are destroyed by cruel capitalists, and their places at the machines are taken by machines.

The dystopian genre became more notable after the First World War, when, in the wake of revolutionary changes, some countries tried to translate utopian ideals into reality. The main one turned out to be Bolshevik Russia, so it is not surprising that the first great dystopia appeared here. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We” (1924) describes an extremely mechanized society, where the individual becomes a helpless cog-“number”. A number of details of the totalitarian system invented by Zamyatin were subsequently used by authors all over the world: forced lobotomy of dissidents, mass media zombifying the people, ubiquitous “bugs”, synthetic food, weaning people from showing emotions. Among other notable domestic dystopias of the 1920s, we note “Leningrad” by Mikhail Kozyrev, “Chevengur” and “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov. Among foreign anti-socialist works, “The Future is Tomorrow” by John Kendell (1933) and “Anthem” by Ayn Rand (1938) stand out.

Another widespread theme of dystopias of those years was anti-fascist, directed primarily against Germany. Already in 1920, the American Milo Hastings published the visionary novel “The City of Eternal Night”: Germany is fenced off from the whole world in an underground city near Berlin, where a “Nazi utopia” is established, inhabited by genetically bred races of supermen and their slaves. But the NSDAP arose only a year before! Interesting anti-fascist books were written by H.G. Wells (The Autocracy of Mr. Parham, 1930), Karel Capek (War with the Newts, 1936), Murray Constantine (Night of the Swastika, 1937).

However, traditional capitalism also suffered. One of the pinnacles of dystopia is the novel by the British Aldous Huxley “Brave New World” (1932), which depicts a technocratic “ideal” caste state based on the achievements of genetic engineering. In order to suppress social discontent, people are processed in special entertainment centers or with the active use of the drug “soma”. A variety of sex is encouraged in every possible way, but such concepts as “mother”, “father”, “love” are considered obscene. Human history has been replaced with a fake: the calendar is calculated from the birth of the American automobile magnate Henry Ford. In general, capitalism taken to the point of absurdity.

Attempts to build a “new society” were mercilessly ridiculed in the classic dystopias of another Briton, George Orwell. The setting of the story “Animal Farm” (1945) is a farm where “oppressed” animals, led by pigs, drive out their owners. The result is that after the inevitable collapse, power passes to a brutal dictator. The novel 1984 (1948) depicts a near-future world divided by three totalitarian empires that are in a very unstable relationship with each other. The hero of the novel is an inhabitant of Oceania, where English socialism has triumphed and the inhabitants are under the constant control of the special services. Of particular importance is the artificially created “newspeak”, which instills absolute conformism in people. Any party directive is considered the ultimate truth, even if it contradicts common sense: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” “Ignorance is strength.” Orwell’s novel has not lost its relevance even now: the “politically correct dictatorship” of a society of victorious globalism, ideologically, is not so different from the picture painted here.

Current page: 5 (book has 24 pages in total)

Chapter 3
THE NIGHT THAT NEVER CAME

According to the clock of history, a moment has passed between the two world wars. The peace treaty concluded in 1918 satisfied the most unbridled appetites of the victorious countries. Few took the defeated Germans into account; only some of the most far-sighted politicians warned against driving Germany into a corner: in this case, it would have no choice but to cherish plans for revenge. The Treaty of Versailles put an end to the war - but from there, from Versailles, a light ran along the Bickford cord stuck in the European powder magazine. By the standards of history, this devilish fuse had only two decades left to burn.

For world imperialism, the war turned out to be a successful test of strength in several directions at once. It provoked desires much more acute than the redistribution of colonies, political dominance in Europe and the seizure of disputed territories. In the last war, militarism for the first time declared itself as an influential, if not the main, social force in the bourgeois world.

A dress rehearsal in the struggle for real world domination, the transformation of war into a global political mechanism, the final “formalization of relations” between the military and the world of science and technology - this is what imperialism tasted in 1914–1918. But I just tried...

And then another circumstance was added, this time unforeseen and therefore doubly alarming. The birth of the world's first socialist state, which caused a chain reaction of revolutionary and national liberation explosions, clearly determined “Goal No. 1” for the capitalist world.

From the point of view of the continuity of world wars, it does not matter that Germany started the second one again. Not she, but any other developed imperialist power would definitely try again. Another thing is that Germany - humiliated, brought to its knees and, naturally, embittered - was better suited than others for inciting attacks on its neighbors. And in Germany itself, forces were stirring, the appearance of which no one could have foreseen - not only on German soil, but in general in world they arose first. (In fairness, it should be noted that Italy had priority - but it quickly ceded the “leading role” to Germany.)

So, there was no peaceful respite. The feeling of painful suffocation, usually preceding a thunderstorm, did not leave Europeans throughout these twenty peaceful years measured by history.

"Peoples collect, manufacture and improve all kinds of explosives, saturate the entire environment easily flammable passions. This is bound to cause an explosion someday. Injustice, violence, insolence and the spirit of vengeance have permeated the old soil of Europe... Europe is a boiling cauldron of international hatred, and powerful people, having reserves of fuel at their disposal, fan the flames." So wrote one of the architects of the Treaty of Versailles, the British, in his "War Memoirs" Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Once again, the experienced politician showed himself to be more insightful and flexible than “principled” (he had previously campaigned for intervention against the young Soviet Russia, and then condemned it, recognizing it as erroneous and unpromising). Others clung to their Versailles “brainchild” with both hands, thereby constantly pushing Europe towards a new war.

Science fiction literature could not help but respond to this new dire warning. Her “weather reports” again, like ten, twenty years ago, gave an accurate and disappointing forecast.

The flow of “military scenarios”, which had stopped during the period of hostilities, resumed with new strength. However, is it true?

Books were published in dozens, they were read, it’s true - but the reader was no longer very worried about all these vicissitudes of imaginary battles on land and at sea. Especially at sea. Bibliographies are replete with references: "The Great Battle of Pacific Ocean"G. Bywater, "The Pacific War" by S. Denlinger and Ch. Gorey, "The Walk of the God of War" by B. Austin. Either the valiant British fleet crushes the Japanese, or, on the contrary, battleships under the flag of the Rising Sun destroy the base American ships. And once I came across this option: a triple battle in the Pacific theater of operations - the naval forces of the USA, Japan and the USSR!..

But all this no longer affected me as before. Pictures of real war, still alive, surpassed the fantasy of novelists in power.

Moreover, the most far-sighted observers could already discern a much more ominous danger. It was coming from Germany - events began swirling there, which at once “concretized” all thoughts about a future war.

...Let's not delude ourselves. Our century will go down in history not only as the century of space and the atom, socialist revolutions and the emergence of a new - planetary - consciousness. He will probably be remembered with an unkind word more than once as century of fascism, which knocked on the door of the 20th century exactly according to the calendar.

On the very eve of the new century - the year 1900 was ending - an unnoticeable event occurred in a solitary ward of one of the Swiss psychiatric clinics. Here the professor of philosophy ended his earthly days, whose books remained largely unread, and whose ideas met with almost unanimous public condemnation. The public saw in them a painful shockingness, a challenge to morality, and, finally, simply nightmares of a frightened intellect, moreover, consumed by its illness: in his youth, the philosopher contracted syphilis. He faded away alone, rejected by everyone - just as he himself, mockingly, rejected and cursed the world around him. However, the death of the spirit occurred even earlier - eleven years before physical death; Then the mind finally faded, succumbing to illness.

One can only guess how the philosopher would have received the news that in the same year - 1889 - in neighboring Austria, at a visiting yard small town Braunau was born one who would publicly declare himself his grateful student. True, he will not descend to the philosophy of a “teacher” (as well as other sciences). But in practice he will try to show what he is capable of superman, whose imminent arrival into the world was announced by the philosopher.

The philosopher's name was Friedrich Nietzsche. The baby was named Adolf.

We just need to clarify here. Among the many historical "deviations" we inherited from the times of Stalin " Short course“, in my opinion, the legend still existing in some places about the “ideological inspirer of Nazism” - Nietzsche - requires, in my opinion, a decisive and speedy revision. Meanwhile, his teaching, not understood, and most likely, deliberately distorted, was especially despised by those whom the philosopher during his lifetime - a herd of people, a gray crowd, mediocrity - they openly expropriated. No matter what Nietzsche preached, I think he would have gone mad even more if he had known that the “genius of mediocrity” and its ideologist would visit picturesquely. his museum in Weimar and filmed next to the bust of the philosopher.

For him, who dreamed of superman, it was, of course, a posthumous tragedy to turn into a court philosopher of “super-monsters.” Not the first and not the last such tragedy in the 20th century...

The distance of time—exactly a century has passed—allows us to fully appreciate this eerie coincidence that grows to the size of a symbol. In the same year: a medical carriage taking a philosophy professor to a madhouse, and the birth of his “student”, a killer of millions, who went down in history under the name of Adolf Hitler.

Nietzsche left his earthly vale in the last year of the outgoing century - and took all the illusions of the 19th century to the grave. And the future Hitler, who then still bore the surname Schicklgruber, turned eleven years old that year; he has probably already read—or will soon read—Nietzsche.

The new century was knocking on the door, and who among the Europeans could have imagined that its entire first half would be painted in three colors: brown, black and red. The brown mold of misanthropic ideas, the black night of “anti-reason”, finally, bloody war, into which fascism plunged the peoples of Europe.

There are themes and plots in literature that arose relatively recently, but are immediately attached to “eternity.” At least, ensuring their own life until the need to write and read what is written dries up in a person. This is anti-fascist literature, “...not an episode in the cultural history of individual countries, but one of the main phenomena of the spiritual life of our century.” Once it appeared in the pre-storm European sky of the 20s, giving the world the works of Thomas Mann, Feuchtwanger, Fuchik, Ehrenburg, Simonov, Brecht and many others, it will not dry up from the frequent appeals to it by artists until the horror of the experience is erased from memory. And even greater - from the realization that could happen if the humanity of the fascist “supermans” did not stop in 1945.

Cultural figures remember well who threatened culture with a gun. The Nazi imbeciles’ attack on the unshakable foundations of human civilization: humanism, honor and dignity of man, freedom, reason and progress was too arrogant and in some ways even absolute, to forget, to forgive... The simple instinct of species self-preservation spurred the imagination of sober-minded intellectuals, because they never During the times of the Inquisition and religious wars, “anti-reason” did not pose such a fierce challenge to culture and humanity.

The critical encyclopedia of fascism remains to be completed. “The cancerous tumor of the 20th century” continues to be studied from a variety of angles: as an ideology, mass psychology, political practice, even as a social psychopathology... And, of course, is constantly in the spotlight of writers fascism as war. Not even the military aggression of Nazi Germany, but fascism itself, as a social phenomenon, married to war from the very beginning.

It is not surprising that in Europe at that time, militarists of all stripes, who were impatient to stir up a new bloody mess, as if on command, turned their gaze to Germany. From the very beginning it was easy to see the “wolfish grin” of yesterday’s corporal with a tasseled mustache. “Wolf” – that’s what he was called, by the way, in the 20s (hence the passion for “wolf” names for bets: “Werewolf”, “Wolfschanze”...). Only short-sighted politicians who were trying to play the “German party” at all costs could not see the bestial gaze that hungrily scoured the European “neighborhoods.”

Writers cannot be fooled that easily; From its very first works, anti-fascist literature simultaneously became emphatically anti-militarist. True, I had to abandon the usual mantras: “art is beyond politics,” “non-resistance to evil through violence,” etc.

The great humanist writer Thomas Mann, four years before the war, called on his colleagues to pay attention to “the violent energy of Nazism, with which it is going to destroy the world, constrained, to its disadvantage, by moral prohibitions, and become its master.” Thomas Mann had no doubt about what the result would be: “This is war, a general catastrophe, the death of civilization. I am firmly convinced that the active philosophy of this human type cannot lead to anything else, and therefore I considered it my duty to talk about him and about the threat that comes from him... Today we need humanism militant, a humanism that would discover courage in itself and would be imbued with the consciousness that the principle of freedom, tolerance and doubt should not allow it to be exploited and trampled by fanaticism, which has neither shame nor doubt."

The pan-European humanistic culture, the symbol and personification of which was the German writer, took up arms. There was enough of it in the arsenals of literature. Realist writers quickly “created from nature,” not disdaining pure journalism (we will see, more than once, how it works in times of crisis), while science fiction writers had to do their usual work. They had to look deeper “inside” the phenomenon of fascism in order, as Pasternak wrote, “around the bend, in the depths,” to discern the future. Fascism and all humanity.

Today, rereading books from half a century ago, I continue to be amazed. How accurate everything is, right in the top ten! And if one thing did not come true, it was our happiness: it passed away, sank into the past like an unsuccessful forecast from science fiction. Perhaps this is their merit, the failed books, that they attracted attention in time, warned, and disturbed the soul. It didn't come true because not allowed come true...

Are those first prophecies now obsolete? How to say. Of course, they were not able to effect a revolution in minds before the start of the battle, and they were not able to influence its subsequent course. They did not prevent the war... True, no books have succeeded in this yet. However, someone read them! And can you confidently say what sometimes decided the outcome of a battle: the number and equipment of divisions or moral qualities, spirit soldier?

The books fulfilled their soldierly duty honestly. Like sentinels, they managed to sound the alarm, like border guards, they managed to shoot at the advancing enemy.

However, the very first alarms were solitary and too weak to be noticed.

And the pictures were too gloomy; the reading public instinctively tried not to notice them. What to do, the time was not conducive to utopian dreams; it, according to the critic, “was full of gloomy memories of the past war, filled with scientistic abstruseness in science and modernist in art; the imagination was additionally spurred by frightening images of dictators striving for power in European countries. utopias lacked operational spiritual space, fresh air, without which the construction of the New Jerusalem is unthinkable."

The allusion to the New Testament book of Revelation, otherwise called the Apocalypse, is not accidental: in the interval between the world wars, any apocalyptic fantasies were inferior in impact to real memories. So it turned out that no one believed the prophetic visions directed to the near future.

Soon after the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, when the bargaining over defeated Germany was still going on in Paris, the unknown American author Milo Hastings published a curious novel, “The City of Eternal Night” (1920). In the 22nd century, Germany unleashes another world war and loses it again. But already in agony, he is building an underground fortress in Berlin, from where plans for reorganizing the world into a planetary Prussian barracks continue to emerge. Fortunately, an agent of the World Government penetrates the underground city, and in the end Germany finally capitulates.

This is such a curious “antique”. It is interesting only because it is the first sign in a long series of anti-German warning novels of the 20s and 30s; their number will naturally increase as the war approaches. But Hastings’s novel is also a prototype of a whole powerful movement in Western science fiction literature. Indeed, behind the plot, quite in the spirit of the military scenarios discussed, a hitherto unprecedented scheme emerges. Later, famous novels by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell, built according to this scheme, would appear - and the term would enter literature dystopia.

I think one of its pioneers was Milo Hastings. One can envy his literary intuition, which unmistakably connected dystopia with German militarism.

“Fascism is not an ideology, but something deeper,” noted a war correspondent for the English newspaper The Observer in one of his reports from the continent. This was just before the end of the Second World War. The correspondent's name was Eric Blair, and a few years later he would become known throughout the world as the author of the greatest dystopia of the 20th century. True, it will be signed by his literary pseudonym: George Orwell...

But I'm getting ahead of myself; Orwell's turn will come.

Let's return to Hastings' book. There is no doubt that the fascists settled in the underground fortress, although the word itself, of course, is not uttered in the novel. Long before Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1932), an unknown American author guessed about the far-reaching plans of the “new order” ideologists for the biological breeding of castes - rulers, soldiers, slaves. At that time, only fantastic literature could think about this; however, it is well known that later the elite of the Third Reich became seriously interested in eugenics.

So already in the 20s science fiction writers ****
It would be unfair to remain silent about our compatriot I.F. Ilyin, who wrote under the pseudonym “Theo Eli” - his novel “The Valley of New Life” was created in 1926, but was first published only in 1966.

They spotted a danger that would be discussed loudly later. The danger of fascism using the latest discoveries in biology, genetics, and psychology. Nazi theorists would then, without hesitation, announce similar projects for creating an “ideal state,” and even special “scientific” activities in this direction would be launched in the special units of Auschwitz and Mauthausen... But in Hastings’ time, no one, it seems, long term plans I didn’t think about fascism. Almost nobody.

And the priority plans - the defeat of all progressive forces within the country, the creation of a totalitarian Nazi state, aiming Germany at aggression against its neighbors - were “promulgated” by Hastings surprisingly in time. In a matter of months, his book overtook the news from Paris: the decisions of the peace conference became public knowledge at the end of January 1921. After which it was not necessary to have special insight to conclude: Germany will not leave this like this...

Less than two years had passed since the American ambassador in Berlin wrote home: “Hitler, a young Austrian sergeant major who fought in the German army during the war and now leads the fascist movement ... is slowly moving forward along the same path as Mussolini.” The date on the letter was December 5, 1922.

A year earlier, in Berlin, the Helikon publishing house published a mischievous novel by the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg, “The Extraordinary Adventures of Julio Jurenito and His Disciples.” Today's reader will look with completely different eyes at this sparkling satire on anything(it’s hard to escape the impression that this is not Kurt Vonnegut!). Time has revealed a lot in a dizzying kaleidoscope of images and ideas. But today you understand with particular acuteness: even then many knew, saw- albeit sometimes confusing - everything that seethed and seethed in Germany.

Ilya Ehrenburg began his long and bright journey as an anti-fascist with this book. It was also the beginning of the writer’s “romance” with the young Soviet social science fiction that was then gaining momentum - unfortunately for her, the romance was short-lived...

Dossier on the topic "Eve":

ILYA GRIGORIEVICH ERENBURG

1891–1967

Soviet writer and poet, public figure. From an early age he participated in revolutionary circles, long years lived in exile. Author of the anti-war novel "The Fall of Paris" (1941) and others and anti-fascist journalism. He was a correspondent for Izvestia during the Spanish Civil War, and during the Great Patriotic War he worked at the Sovinformburo. Outstanding peace activist, vice-president of the World Peace Council (since 1950). International Prize "For Strengthening Peace Among Nations" (1952).

At the end of his life, the writer assessed his first novel differently: “Of course, this book contains a lot of absurd judgments and naive paradoxes; I kept trying to discern the future; I saw one thing, I was wrong in another... In “Jurenito” I denounced all kinds of racism and nationalism, denounced the war, cruelty, greed and hypocrisy of those people who started it and who do not want to give up wars... Twelve years before Hitler came to power, I brought out Herr Schmidt, who “can be both a nationalist and a socialist at the same time,” who tells the French and Russians: “we need to organize you,” “colonize Russia, destroy France and England as thoroughly as possible... We will leave bare land.”... If I had not written this in 1921, then in 1940 he would not have been able to write “The Fall of Paris”. Sometimes I was wrong, sometimes I saw quite clearly.”

Ehrenburg was not mistaken in his assessment of fascism, and in battles with it, fate more than once threw the writer to the front line. Some pages of the novel - it seems that they were written much later - clearly indicate that the writer “saw quite clearly.” Thus, Herr Schmidt’s long rants about “bringing exemplary order” to a blossoming Europe are strikingly reminiscent of the thoughts of his real-life compatriot, who just three years later published a certain essay. The author called it long and pretentiously: “Four and a half years of struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice,” but the publisher insisted on another, more laconic title: “My Struggle” (“Mein Kampf” in German)…

In Ehrenburg's next novel, "Trust D.E." (1923) - this novel is sure to be mentioned in the works of historians of Russian science fiction literature - again alarm is heard for the future of Europe. It's about not about her mythological “abduction,” but, on the contrary, about a very real savagery and death. It is a cruel irony that the French are conquering Europe from Ehrenburg and starting with Germany! But the writer’s main idea still does not become obsolete - about the inhumanity of the “new” weapon, which will certainly boomerang on the instigator.

With all the desire, it is difficult to attribute “Julio Jurenito” and “Trust D.E.” to the heights of the writer's creativity; you won't name them striking examples young Soviet science fiction. In the decade when Alexey Tolstoy and Alexander Belyaev were actively creating, Ilya Erenburg’s science fiction novels inevitably “moved” somewhere into the second or third row. But the story of anti-fascist fiction in the period between the world wars would be sadly incomplete without these kaleidoscopic, sparkling and sometimes mercilessly funny books.

Moreover, the baton was picked up.

Herr Schmidt and the “killer of Europe” Jens Boot from the novel “Trust D.E.” – this is still a very blurry portrait of the future real “criminal No. 1”. Alexey Tolstoy added a noticeable touch to it.

The creator of Garin’s image does not need any “justification” before science fiction historians. His novel, published in two editions - in 1925 and 1927, is still one of the most readable works writer; and in Russian science fiction, “Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid” is simply a classic.

Dossier on the topic "Eve":

ALEXEY NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOY

1882/83-1945

Outstanding Soviet writer and public figure. Author of classic works of socialist realism - the trilogy "Walking in Torment" (1922–1941), "Peter I" (1929–1945), etc. One of the founders of Soviet science fiction literature. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1939). Three times laureate of State Prizes (1941, 1943, 1946 – posthumously). A prominent peace activist, participant in the first peace congresses.

Tolstoy's novel about the engineer Garin is noticeably inferior in popularity to Aelita. One can see in the book an element of parody of the established “red Pinkerton” genre - a mixture of an adventurous plot with a dream of world revolution; This is evidenced by the details, images, laconic, even dashing style. But one cannot ignore the obvious comparison: Garin’s bangs and pointed beard are Hitler’s bangs and pointed mustache.

Probably, the writer himself added some touches to the second edition of the novel that related to the statements of the then little-known leader of a frail German group of provocateurs who called themselves the “party.” I cannot judge whether Alexei Tolstoy had heard about Hitler before 1927 - the first volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1925; It’s quite possible that I heard it. But general atmosphere The impending war, towards which the power-hungry maniac is pushing the world, is captured in the novel accurately and in a timely manner.

Garin is an artistic portrait of Hitler, not even a caricature. A lot of things are not the same. But “Garinism” is akin to Hitlerism; they are brought together by the most pragmatic projects (like concentration camps for all the dissatisfied), and hidden long-term “dreams”, which we will focus on.

So, Pyotr Petrovich Garin, a scientist who sacrificed his talent to incredible egoism coupled with ambition, dreams of this. Absolute power, not controlled by anyone or anything, which the tyrants of the past could not even dream of. The selection of the future “race of patricians”, who will be left to “indulge in the highest pleasures and creativity”, then the “Trudoviks”, they will have to ensure the idle existence of the elite. The “scientist” thought through the smallest details: “They will not rebel, no, dear comrade. The possibility of revolutions will be completely destroyed. To each Trudovik after classification and before issuance work book A minor operation will be performed. Completely unnoticed, under accidental anesthesia... A small puncture through the cranial bone. Well, I just felt dizzy - I woke up, and he was already a slave.”

Alexei Tolstoy had no idea about the novel by the American Hastings. But the thought of the authors who lived in different countries, ran into the same thing, one had only to think about the prospects of fascism.

And here’s what’s remarkable: in Alexei Tolstoy’s novel the phenomenon is named after itself. After listening to Garin’s rantings, Shelga just throws out: “Fascist utopianism...”

Captivated by detective intrigue, readers of that time would perhaps have missed the “insignificant” episode in which the Russian scientist Khlynov tells the German Wolf: “You are a German from head to toe, armored infantry, machine manufacturer, you have nerves, I think it’s a different composition. Listen, Wolf, if you fall into the hands of people like you, Garin’s apparatus, what will you do…” And in response he hears: “Germany will never come to terms with humiliation.”

There is not just dull anger here, a shameful memory of Versailles - a threat, unsuppressed, confident! What Wolf doesn’t say, Shelga again calls by her name:

“Garin and his enterprise are nothing more than the extreme point of capitalist consciousness. There is nowhere to go further than Garin: the forced transformation of the working part of humanity into animals through brain surgery, the selection of the chosen ones - the “kings of life”, stopping the progress of civilization. The bourgeoisie do not yet understand Garin “Yes, he himself is in no hurry to be understood. He is considered a bandit and an invader. But they will eventually understand that imperialism rests on Garin’s system.”

In his science fiction novel, Alexey Tolstoy managed to show how they agreed and finally understood each other. IN real life that will happen later. In the meantime, having slammed the book shut, the reader is unable to suppress anxiety; the author’s words are in everyone’s ears: “Peter Garin made an agreement with Mr. Rolling... History was spurred, history rushed at a gallop, ringing golden horseshoes on the skulls of fools.”

The time for amazing discoveries by individuals was coming to an end. In the second half of the 30s, enormous material was collected for a thinking writer capable of analytical generalizations. The time has come for a comprehensive, as we would say now, study of the phenomenon. Fascism in its entirety, just as it is.

And for science fiction literature - and fascism, “as it strives to become.”

On the eve of a new world war, “heavy artillery” arrived at the positions of anti-fascist fiction. Immediately two of the largest representatives of their national cultures entered the battle - the Czech Karel Capek and the American Sinclair Lewis.

I will not repeat everything that has been written about Capek’s novel “The War with the Newts” (1936) and Lewis’s book “We Can’t Do It,” published a year earlier. But they are interesting as a continuation of the correspondence roll call of anti-fascist writers begun by Hastings, in at least two directions.

This is, firstly, the military aggression of fascism. And secondly, social conformism, which feeds this aggression from within.

The latter is often underestimated, or even simply ignored. Meanwhile, the military adventure of Nazism could not have started so successfully if Hitler had not brought the nation to the required condition. In order for the people to turn into a blind herd - and inevitably into cannon fodder, it is necessary to awaken the animal in almost every person...

I will start, regardless of chronology, with Capek’s book.

Dossier on the topic "Eve":

KAREL CHAPEK

1890–1938

An outstanding Czech writer, one of the founders of modern science fiction, a classic of Czech literature. Graduated from Charles University in Prague. Author of the sharply satirical, anti-militaristic novels "Factory of the Absolute" (1922), "Krakatit" (1924); plays, journalism. Towards the end of his life he became involved in active anti-fascist activities.

The Czech writer worked his entire life towards the novel “The War with the Newts,” “an exhaustive encyclopedia of fascism” (an amazing definition of a book written before the start of the Second World War!). This is his creative result, Chapek’s “people, be careful.”

In the 20s and 30s, the author of the world famous play "R.U.R.", which gave the world the word "robot", discovers political journalism. The Czech writer sees deeper than many of his fellow writers. Behind the “supermans” frantically marching through German squares, it is easy to discern their patrons - in Germany itself and beyond its borders. “Madmen, finally stop feeding the salamanders!.. If only people, human civilization and human history would stop working for the salamanders. And stop supplying the salamanders with weapons.”

These lines of the future novel are intended for those who fed fascism from the outside. And in 1934, the writer spoke to the German “intellectuals”, who not only cowardly lowered their eyes to the insolence of the shopkeepers who minted their steps, but also tried to theoretically “substantiate” the legality of their claims: “We are present at one of the greatest scandals in world history: a whole a nation, an entire power, has sunk to belief in the animal principle, in race, and similar nonsense. Look, a whole nation, including universities, professors, pastors, writers, doctors and lawyers. Do you think this animal doctrine could be proclaimed if everyone! An educated person in this highly educated country shrugged his shoulders and dryly declared that he would not allow these idiotic things to be done to himself. What has happened is nothing less than a huge betrayal of educated people, and this leads to terrible thoughts about what the intelligentsia is capable of."

The theme will be developed in the novel. It will go to professors who advocate “racially pure” science, and to decadent creators of spiritual anti-culture (“After us, at least there are salamanders” - this is from a novel...). And simply cowards who have chosen the ostrich-like policy of non-intervention.

In the meantime, it’s 1934, and Chapek, for the first time in his life, is participating in the drafting of an anti-fascist manifesto. “At Opernplatz in Berlin, the ashes of the bonfires on which books were burned have already been removed. The works of poets and scientists have burned out; socialism, pacifism, freedom of thought were thrown into the fire, as if in this way they could be burned from the world.” Dangerous neighborhood in little Czechoslovakia it was felt especially acutely: there was a smell of burning...

And the salamanders invented by the Czech writer, of course, did not bloom to deceive anyone. “The mysterious salamander, which does not burn in fire, is one of the most poisonous creatures. Its poison permeates the fruits of trees and poisons the water. After eating the fruits from a tree poisoned by the salamander, a person dies,” the authors of the medieval “Bastiary” reported, referring to earlier “evidence "Aristotle and Pliny (the latter also mentioned “ice blood”).